Author: The Ecological Self

I'm a PhD student specializing in human perceptions of nature and animals, an avid reader, and a passionate enthusiast of all things relating to sustainable and harmonious man-nature interactions.
Heather Alberro on Google+

One of the curious paradoxes of the Anthropocene is that the extensive ecological damage wrought by human activity has also revealed an agentic earth and more-than-human entities that are reacting to human encroachments. We are beginning to realize that we are not the only influencers and earth-movers, but that other species, entities, and earth forces… Continue reading Agency All Around

(Pictured above: An Orangutan desperately charges at a bulldozer in a last-ditch effort to protect the final remnants of his forest home in Borneo) There is no longer serious debate around the fact we have since left the Holocene and entered a new and wholly unpredictable era: the era of humans as a geological force… Continue reading Welcome to the Anthropocene

The prominent and late ecofeminist Val Plumwood (2002) provides a penetrating analysis of the structure of dualism, an essential component of hierarchies in all their forms and as well as a key driver of the damaged human-nature dialectic. Plumwood (2002) reminds us that many of the traditional, interrelating, and mutually reinforcing dichotomies that have persisted… Continue reading A Short Note on Dualism

At the latest Earth First! gathering in the brisk and sunny hills of rural Cuffley, nearly a week of thought-provoking workshops, networking with truly inspiring people, and exquisite vegan meals, I had profound, moving experiences with alterity. Alterity typically denotes otherness, though particularly radical 'otherness', that which is so different to what one typically thinks… Continue reading Encounters with Alterity

(Featured image a concept painting of San Francisco in 2048 for the film, The Fifth Sacred Thing, courtesy of Jessica Perlstein) In light of our era’s myriad socio-ecological crises, the utopian imaginary is no mere imaginative exercise, it is utterly vital for the continuity of life as we know it. The rapacious global socioeconomic system… Continue reading My Vision for Our Future Ecotopia

Many of us dwelling in and around the myriad concrete jungles of the world may not realize that we have the great honor of sharing these spaces with the last living descendants of the dinosaurs, namely an ancient group of two-legged giants known as theropods. Few of us give these beings the consideration that their unique characteristics and… Continue reading Unacknowledged Urban Marvels

"Developmental psychologists have effectively shut out the world of butterflies, ponds, and porcupines...It has thus not occurred to researchers, furthermore, to ask about the possible ongoing harm of being restricted to domestic, human-dominated settings- as opposed to the more wild, multispecific sorts that have been the norm for all humans up until only recent times"… Continue reading Biophiliac

On Saturday, February 25th, 2017, I had my very first encounter with activists from the radical direct-action group, Earth First!, at their biannual 'Winter Moot' gathering in Manchester. As a longtime enthusiast and admirer of their work and incredible passion for animals and the natural support systems on which we all depend, and as they… Continue reading Earth First! Extraordinary First Encounters

The State of Our Co-Evolutionary Kin: The 6th Mass Extinction? Did you know that, according to Cousteau, half of the marine life he filmed in 1956 had disappeared by 1963 (and what is left today)?” (Gorz, 1987, pg. 64) The answer to Gorz’s poignant query, ‘what is left today?’ is a truly terrifying one. Recent… Continue reading 67 Percent

One key aspect of the ecological self and what I maintain to be vital elements of newly harmonious human-nature relations is encapsulated by the transdisciplinary theory of ‘new materialism’ (DeLanda, 1996), which rethinks subjectivity and lends primacy to the role played by matter (atoms, molecules, earth processes, etc.) in the agentic, metamorphosing, and self-organizing natural… Continue reading New Materialism for a Posthumanist Ethic